People as fodder: How can they rise above? Even the president admires those who, like him, take advantage of others for their own purposes: obstruct working people's autonomy, education, mobility, financial cushion. Persuade, demonize dissent. Culture, religion, politics at work. Photos. By Dint. Hub for conflict issues: Studying War.

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Above: Lake Geneva, Switzerland. At Montreux.

Fodderize v.t. 1. To break down individual components; to make fungible; to disregard difference; to render one easily substituted for another 2. To impose sub-quality goods or services upon, with little recourse 3. To cap role choices, hinder access to resources regardless of merit, and so avoid competition 4. To manage perception by propaganda-spin techniques, while concealing dispositive facts 5. To manipulate, lure, exploit, deceive

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Saturday, October 15, 2011

The issue is not economic inequality; the issue is economic exploitation, manipulation of access to opportunity. Will this movement, can this movement, be co-opted by the NRA, and Armageddonists, who took over the Tea Party earlier? Join this upgraded Peasants' Revolt..

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Peasants' Revolts are Newly Modern.Revolts Seeking Dignity in LifeRise Up Now

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1. Yesterday. Revolts are historically ongoing. Peasants' Revolts, revolts against feudalism, colonialism, empire. Suburbs and Teas find they are small steered potatoes, compared to the real issues of human rights: dignity, sustenance, health security, opportunity. Is it time to cure, rather than suppress?
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2. Today. Add global revolts against economic and religious suppression, disrespect, undisclosed power plays.
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3. Tomorrow. Can the Teas and regular Republicans of our own country see their own manipulation, and join in the broader effort for human rights, not just their own cultural "superiority?" Operative summary for one viewpoint: See NYT caption that the game in politics is to control people, but not let them know they are being controlled. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/does-anyone-have-a-grip-on-the-gop.html?ref=magazine.
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1. Yesterday

Protesters against economic and cultural abuses have much in common today with those yesterday. Historically, peasants revolted against feudal abuses: lack of sustenance and dignity in life, serving as chattel.
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In those days, there may not have been individual aspirations for nameless peasants. That was a concept unheard of in castle days, but the seeds were there. Disrespect, exploitation leads to instability. Is it finally time to cure the reasons driving these same-issue protests that kill so many in mind and body; or will we simply suppress it one more time. We are more articulate: protest obstructed access to opportunity, reasonable compensation for labor expended.

Then ask: Is it time to cure the ills, rather than suppress the protesters. The issue is not income inequality, economic inequality. The issue is economic exploitation, the manipulation of access to opportunity so that those now lower than the higher cannot rise.

Earlier protest movements like the Silent Majority in Nixon's time in this country, see FN 1, had some factual validity: perhaps they were overtaxed. But that is not true now. Those who believe they are overtaxed have been lied to. Is that so?

So the Silent Majority stewed with reason. Their tax issue now, however, has been coopted by interests other than in a majority of ordinary people, and is revived as a farce. Which other earlier-valid stands, by a silent majority or a moral majority, have been co-opted in this new corporation-media era, by the NRA and Armageddonists and other hangers-on. Who will spill the beans? see FN 1 for the history, as that presentation was and is tilted for ongoing persuasion and coopting of earlier stands of the Tea Party.
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Detractors describe protesters as only the unsophisticated, uneducated, unemployed; the exploited serf.

That suggests the solution: fund education, fund jobs.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?

The protests focus on the men behind the curtains.

Protesters now includes the working but unable to sustain self and family; or those making it but who just want to be okay until they kick the bucket. Some seek not profits, but a lifestyle that allows focus on arts, relationship, intellect, individualism. The common denominator is dignity. Without sustenance, access to opportunity, there is no dignity. Does the equivalent of the

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What is the Tea Party response? Their leaders diss any protest but their own. So look back. Does the Tea party have more in common with Occupy Wall Street than their media want them to think. Have they already been co-opted by their own now self-serving politicians and media.
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Some in the Tea Party or Republican mode ascribe credit for their success to the line of protests from suburban "silent majority", through the persuaded "moral majority", to a new "vocal majority" now, the Tea Party. Red State, see FN 1.
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But they also suggest that they are the end, highest point. Not so. Even they do not know who funds them, who pulls the strings.
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They are wrong in their assessment of the end-game as themselves.

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Their protesters only touched upon cultural, religious issues, none of the base issues of causation that even they protested.

Today's protesters on Wall Street focus on an unspoken common ground between Tea Party and Occupy Wall Streeters. Can regular Republicans and Tea Partiers step back from their handlers and vet.

3. Tomorrow.

Support the focus now going deeper.

All humans

All humans have a right to a life of dignity: sustenance, health security, access to opportunity, and regardless of the orientation of which political party or its funders, or a religious group and its funders, they espouse.

Deny that to any group at the peril of the whole.

Suburban silents, aging bus-people with placards, people finding the joy of relationship with new folks, gun-carriers, the unemployed, the unsophisticated, the uneducated, all have a right to conduct their lives with the components of basic dignity.

Red State? Thank you for an interesting overview to cheer (sis-boom) the organizing ability of people on their own, and those with hidden coaches.

CONCLUSION. Today' s global protests hit the core of a dignified life for all, not the simplistic aspects of culture that the local US groups used to tout. The earlier Silent Majority and its tax and disrespect concerns; the later Moral Majority and its Jesus interpretation and tax concerns; all co-opted by the Vocal Majority's handlers, NRA and Armageddonists. Old over-taxation issues no longer true. Vet. What else is not true, NRA and Armageddonists?

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FN 1 Red State looks at Background. No open quotes, but the framework is at the asterisk * This is a free-wheeling paraphrase, commentary on an old article promoting the Tea Party but with interesting historical chronologies. To be vetted. Is this so?
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RED STATE *

Start with Richard Nixon, president January 1969 to August 1974. His term for protesters who sat back was “the Silent Majority” -- millions of Americans who worked hard, but did not protest except to vote.
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In that Nixon era, protesters were on the streets against the Vietnam way, and they were having sex (gasp!), taking drugs, engaged in "demonic" rock music, and changing America with its version of "radical political thought." they did not just wait until election day.
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Nixon believed this: that the Silent Majority supported him, while the media and scholarly elites hated him and hated the Silent Majority and Nixon also. He was right at election time: in 1972, he beat George McGovern, and the "elites" he described as the media and academia became more enraged.

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What did the enraged media do to get back? They painted the Silent Majority with pejorative colors: "hayseeds and rubes who had no idea what was right for the nation." The media further put out the Silent Majority as "unsophisticated, uneducated, middle-class and working-class drones who had no business trying to influence the direction of our nation." There was more: media attacks on "liberal socialism from Hollywood and New York" – through the media – and Washington, in its political processes.
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Nixon was on point.
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The Silent Majority of that day were regular folks who largely wanted to be left alone: people, say, from suburbs and little towns, rural Ameria, who paid their own way, were independent, paid taxes, and wanted little from government.
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Nixon could well have been talking, with prescience, about the Tea Party, the newly vocal, previously "silent majority" kind of people; they protest aloud their beliefs that they are taxed too much, and the government is wasting their money and risking their future, and governmental greed and corruption also will affect their children. .
In 1984, the Silent Majority was augmented by the Moral Majority -- Reagan rode that wave right over Jimmy Carter. Jerry Falwell led, largely, that Moral Majority-entitled group who until that time, had voted for the Democrats. They were convinced, however, by Rev. Falwell, that the Democrats had abandoned them. They were convinced as well that the country needed stronger national defense in conventional ways, walls against an ongoing Soviet threat, and economic growth instead of the standstill they experienced. Have faith in God and in the moral goodness of the Republican party instead.
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In 2010 (the date of this Red State article), enter the New Vocal Majority. They see stakes as even higher then before, and it attacks a new (projected) unholy trinity, instead of just a vague idea of differences in religion; and that unholy trinity usurps traditional religion to become personified in the (incarnate) Pelosi, Reid and Obama. Fight PRO.
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Fight the Pro's. Fight Pelosi, Reid and Obama. The Devil's trinity supplanting all the other ideas.
Issues? Perceived fiscal abuse by democrats. Perceived national security neglect by democrats (this in 2010 after nearly a decade of republican fiscal policy and national security fiascos?)

Thus is is abuses by the democrats that

"have caused millions of American to band together not only to to create the Tea Party movement, but all sorts of other anti-big-government, anti-tax, pro-property, pro-gun and pro-Constitution movements. These people are fed up and are speaking out against the waste, fraud and abuse that is causing the economy to slide into stasis and unemployment, and moral decay that is causing myriad social crises."

Yet, continues Red State, the media elites still disrespect the New Vocal Majority and favor snobs in NY and Hollywood. The difference is that now the Reds can dominate the media. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Grover Norquist. (Propaganda works, not fact, is that the message?).

Founders of our democracy warned "that electoral democracy could lead to an entrenched political class – like congressmen elected over and over for decades – and a greedy, rapacious entitled class that could manipulate elections to funnel money its way ".

The New Vocal Majority, however, opposes political and entitled classes both; and wants liberty instead, and not just the fleeing entitlements of a particular point in time.

The article notes that the American Revolution was supported only by some 30% of the American people. (Good point. So? The majority is not always right)